Sofia Vergara failed to 'fix' accent

12:53 PM Tuesday Jan 3, 2012

Sofia Vergara spent a lot of money trying to "fix" her Colombian accent when she started acting.

The Happy Feet Two star didn't think she would ever get an acting job with her South American tone, so she used to try to speak with a different pronunciation during auditions in an attempt to impress.

"At the beginning I thought I could fix my accent to make it sound like something else so I spent a lot of money and time to change it," she said.

"But I was going to auditions and I was putting all my concentration on changing the next word to a different accent so my acting completely disappeared. I was just thinking about the pronunciation. I was getting no response from directors or anything because it was terrible."

The 39-year-old beauty - who voices the role of Carmen in Happy Feet Two - finally realised her new twang was "getting worse and worse" so she decided to go back to basics and use her natural voice, which proved far more successful.

She added: "There are not many roles for Latin women with an accent in the industry. The roles I was getting were ones where the directors would say it doesn't matter where this person is from we just need a character.

"I think my accent was getting worse and worse with time so I decided to just try for things where I can use my own accent."